Steve Jobs Was A Snarling Brute Who Humiliated People Just To Do It, Says Paul Allen (AAPL)

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Allen also had numerous run-ins with Steve Jobs in the early days of Microsoft, when the company started making software for the Macintosh.

According to Allen, Jobs was a jerk, and he didn't care if people realized it.

When Allen and Gates visited California for the first demo of the Mac, Jobs sat down with Andy Hertzfeld and turned the machine on. It locked up after a minute, and Jobs was furious. As Allen tells it:

"What the fuck is going on?" [Jobs] snarled at Hertzfeld, who'd probably been up all night getting things ready and was now trying to shrink under the table. "These guys came all the way down here to see this thing and this is the best we can do? This is the best we can do? We get thirty seconds and a frozen screen? What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Years later, when Allen saw the 1999 TV movie "The Pirates of Silicon Valley," he was reminded of the incident -- the movie portrays Jobs as a "mean-spirited jerk," he writes.